Thursday, October 20, 2011

Food Finds: Best Cooking Ingredients 2011

Estrellita Market

When you want to make great food at home, Howard County offers you way more than the standard supermarkets. Until Wegmans opens in 2012 (or the Whole Foods comes in my dreams), you'll need to cobble together good cooking at ethnic, organic and other markets.

The 2010 list was pretty good. So I scrapped all of those and offer 10 new simple things:

Grab smoked trout at the Town Grill in Lisbon. (Last year, I pushed the smoked salmon.) It's a great stop on the way to or from Larriland Farms. Grab the house-smoked salmon and use it for pasta or other recipes.

Pick a skirt steak at Laurel Meat Market. You also can't beat the ground chuck. Ideal for hamburgers, the ground chuck would also work wonderfully for meat balls or pasta sauces. This is real meat, ground in the shop. The only kind that I want to eat these days.

Spice up your cooking by driving to Penzeys in Rockville. That's a run from Howard County, but you can buy so many different spices and mixes. It's an inspiration to spend $30 on small packages and throw away all those dried out herbs that have lived for yours in your drawer.

This week, I'm posting a series of "best of" posts starting with best restaurants and best food experiences. Then some posts about finds at stores -- the best grab and go items and the best ingredients for cooks. You can click for all the "best of" posts.

2 comments:

RDAdoc
said...

Another great find I've enjoyed is the soup mixes from Great Harvest. It's the next best thing to making soup completely from scratch. I found a great potato leek mix & all I had to add was potatoes & milk. It was quick, delicious & healthy. They also have wonderful chili mixes.